[Love Notes / Lovebook]

How can you find someone right for you?

First, you must admit — annoying though it may be — that you won’t be happy with anyone unless you are happy with yourself and the life you are leading.

Ask yourself what you care about, what you want out of life, and what you can do to improve yourself and your life. Write down a list of four or five ideas for each. And — depending on your spiritual style — pray, meditate, and/or reflect on the questions.

Second, you should begin taking action to find the life that is right for you. Make a list of long-term and short-term goals and put them in a calendar. Keep a journal to record your progress.

Third, ask yourself why you want a relationship in the first place. What do you really want? Do you want a family with a bunch of kids in a nice big house in a safe, snug little town? Do you want a partner with whom you can live a nomadic life, free of the typical obligations of family? Do you want a dancing partner? A workout partner? Someone you can discuss literature with? Someone to watch TV with? How important is sexual, physical, emotional, and intellectual connection for you? How important are looks, money, values, intelligence, sweetness, kindness? How important is age? Fitness level? Diet? Be honest. Just let yourself know where you are at right now.

Fourth, put what you think you want out of your life next to what you think you want out of a partner. Do they lists complement each other? Can you be the person you want to be with your daydreamed partner? If not, what needs to change? Maybe you need to adjust your expectations in your partner; or maybe what you dream of in a partner is telling you something profound about what you really want to do and be in your life.

Fifth, ask yourself if you’re being reasonable in your expectations for a partner. Given the number of people in the pool you’ve imagined for yourself, how likely are you to find one of them who you can build a lasting, secure relationship with?

Sixth, ask yourself if there are some items in your partner wish-list that you could forgo if it meant finding someone who loved you and who you loved and with whom you could successfully pursue the following game plan:

Every day we will try to get to know one another a little better; to be a little kinder to each other; to care for each other a little more sweetly; to cherish each other a little more fully; to grow together into wiser, kinder, more effective people.

Adjust your wish lists according to these prayers, meditations, and/or reflections.

And then — continuing with your wish-lists (for your life in general and for your romantic life), your personal goal-setting and calendaring, and your self-reflective journaling — step out into the world.

Open your mind and heart. Pull your shoulders back and down. Let the Light in. Tell yourself you will listen to the people around you and try to have the best relationship you can with whoever comes your way. That is: in each moment, practice the gentle, joyful, selfless collaboration that you dream of perfecting with your partner. And be ready for possible friendly acquaintances, friends, and maybe even someone you might want to date.

Then what?

Well, you might add in online dating. Or going to Meetups to meet up with people who share similar interests. Or maybe you’ve joined communities as part of your life-improvement quest — maybe you could work to be a little less shy in communities you already belong to.

Take it easy. Get to know people. Remember that you don’t need some specific person to go for you. You’re trying to find the right person because the loneliness in your heart, all over your body, and in the pit of your gut — where dwells the Hurt — longs to be held and known and loved and kept safe. That’s understandable. But the underlying motivation is that you long for a happy and fulfilling life; and you can and are working on that already; and a healthy partnership will help you with this underlying goal but an unhealthy partnership will diminish your ability to live life to the fullest.

Relax. Take it easy. Don’t go out on dates thinking you need this to work, or that you need to escape it if it doesn’t work. Go out on dates to find the best relationship between you and this other person. Maybe it is marriage and foreverdom. Or maybe it’s a friendship. Or maybe it’s just an OK conversation you had that one time and then you let it go. Or who knows? You don’t know. But you do know that is your goal: a win-win: a date where both people grow and help one another find their way forward.

You’ve been aiming for win-win and what-is-best-for-everyone in all your human interactions already (remember? from before?). So this is nothing new. Of course, there is a slight twist when you’re on a date: Both people have admitted to themselves and one another that they are looking for a romantic relationship with someone not entirely dissimilar to the person now sitting across from them at this table for two (or, if you’re say in a pandemics, across the internet from them).

Those are some thoughts about how one might find true love.

I didn’t want to undo our momentum or enthusiasm while sketching out the general plan, but here and there in the process, it is probably good to stop and ask yourself if you even really want to find a partner all that much.

Maybe you kind of like being single. It gives you more time and money to spend on fun, creative, and/or altruistic activities. You can do as you please of a lazy weekend afternoon. There’s many serious stressors that simply don’t come up in the single life.

Furthermore, it would of course be nice to be held, but the more fundamental relationship involves the motion simultaneously in towards the Light within your every conscious moment and out towards the Light in others — a motion well-summarized by the famous, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself. And, to clarify: ‘your neighbor’ is everyone, particularly those in need of assistance.”

Considering these factors can help keep things in perspective, and there’s no harm in contemplating: you’re still allowed to ultimately decide you’d really like to find romance.

True love is like enlightenment, and both are like calculus: true lovers keep getting closer and closer to completely accepting, caring for, and delighting in the other; the wise keep getting closer and closer to completing accepting, caring for, and delighting in everyone; the limit of x keeps getting closer and closer to, though never quite reaches x.

You cannot reach the end of love, because love is infinite and we people are finite. But you can reach a calculus-like momentum where you are always improving, always getting closer to 100% Pure Love — the love that embraces and uplifts everyone.

The analogy to calculus is not perfect: with people, progress is never without setbacks. But you get the gist of what I’m saying: we will never love perfectly, but we can reach a point where the momentum is carrying us decidedly in the right direction.

Author: Idun Knowe, Self-Memo-ist
Editors: Bartleby Willard & Amble Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson
Websites: From-Bartleby.com; PureLoveShop.com
Our Books So Far: Superhero Novella, A Readable Reader, First Essays, First Loves

[Love Notes has more on Pure Love & Win-Wins]

[Lovebook has Love Notes, Win-Wins, Advertisements for Pure Love, & More]

[This is a work of Something Deeperism]